Drivetrain Torture Test: What Goes Wrong?
The sustained high speeds at the Real Hoopties of New Jersey 24 Hours of LeMons proved very effective at encouraging rods to throw, bearings to spin, and transmissions to explode into a billion pieces. So, what fails when cheap, tired cars spend hour after hour with pedal affixed firmly to metal?
If Mitsubishi had anything to do with the car in question, as was the case with this unfortunate Plymouth Laser, you can count on catastrophic transmission failure. Actually, you can also count on catastrophic engine failure, if the transmission happens to hold together for an extra hour or so.
We were all impressed by the Laser’s dramatic transmission failure… until the Scuderia Regurgito Fiat 131 came in on the wrecker. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen with drag race cars making monster power, but this car had 86 horsepower when new.
The Fiat’s driver limped away with nothing worse than a big bruise on his leg and a dramatic racing story to tell. We were all very happy that no sharp parts got launched his way.
Small-block Chevy V8s have a truly miserable longevity record in LeMons racing; I’d say that 80% of them suffer some sort of major breakdown during the course of a 24 Hours of LeMons weekend. This one, installed in a 3rd-gen Firebird, lost a connecting rod, which punched a hole in the oil pan, which spewed all its oil on the track and put a hold on the fun for quite a while.
This ex-dirt-track Monte Carlo had no end of troubles with its small block (allegedly a 305, but come on now!). Among its many mechanical woes were the 16 bent pushrods and the fried crankshaft. With minutes remaining before the checkered flag on Sunday, the Monte returned to the track… where it promptly blew up again.
The Saab B/H engine is another ticking time bomb. Oh, sure, the Saab 900 is pretty quick on a road course… for a while.
Then something like this will happen.
You can go ahead and get a replacement engine… but that just means that this will happen.
Speaking of Saabs, what happens when you bolt a turbocharged Saab H to a Nissan transmission using a homemade adapter plate, to make a Saab-powered 300ZX? Transmission hash!
Team Rust In The Wind did some sort of horrifying Field Expedient Engineering kludge on their transmission, fusing the thing in fourth gear and finishing the race that way. For this, they earned the Heroic Fix trophy.
For reasons nobody understands, the Toyota MR2 is the world’s most efficient engine-bearing-destroying device ever to hit the road. Rod bearings, main bearings, cam bearings; if it’s a bearing and it’s inside a Toyota engine, the MR2 will find a way to spin it. For a while, the prevailing theory was that the combination of Toyota A engine and MR2 cooling system and/or oil pan was causing overheating and oil starvation in turns (the A also fails with depressing regularity when installed in Corollas and Celicas, though nowhere near as often as in the MR2), but then we started seeing various Toyota V6s installed in MR2s and they failed as well. You can read the story of how the Schumacher Taxi Service got screwed by their 3VZ-powered MR2 here. In fact, Toyota engines, including the allegedly bulletproof 20/22R, have fared pretty badly in LeMons racing.
With all this carnage, we had the usual “Here we go again” sinking feeling when we saw the Speedycop Galaxie limp off the track and burst into engine-compartment flames. This car has Ford 302 power, and the Ford Windsor has demonstrated extremely iffy reliability in LeMons racing; it’s not quite as bad as the small-block Chevy, but I’ve seen dozens of 302s and 351s put rods through oil pans over the last few years. Fortunately, this time the 302 in question had just popped a power-steering hose.
Down there with the Chevy in the reliability department, the Honda B engine has but one desire during a grueling endurance race: set my connecting rods free! Actually, the Honda D and H engines are nearly as bad, though the D tends to blow head gaskets more often than it throws rods.
So, what engines don’t blow up in LeMons racing? The Ford Modular 4.6 has been quite a LeMons survivor. The Chrysler Neon engine holds up well under the abuse of a LeMons race. Nissan SR engines have been good. Volkswagen engines? Nein!
If you’ve got 3D glasses, be sure to check out my 3D photo gallery at Cars In Depth, where you’ll see the busted parts coming right at you.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Actually, Alfa has traditionally made tough engines, the unreliable bits lurk elsewhere.